Tony Vitello Named Baseball America’s 2024 College Baseball Coach Of The Year
Image credit: Tennessee Vols head coach Tony Vitello (22) holds up the NCAA Championship Trophy after the Vols 6-5 win over the Texas A&M Aggies in game 3 of the the College World Series Championship at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska on Monday, June 24, 2024 (Eddie Kelly/ProLook Photos)
With confetti raining down at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Tennessee coach Tony Vitello raised the national championship trophy aloft. His Volunteers had just won the 2024 College World Series, cementing their legacy as one of the best teams of all-time.
Tennessee won 60 games this season, more than any team in 22 years. The Volunteers collected every trophy they could, winning both the Southeastern Conference regular season crown and SEC Tournament on their way to Omaha greatness. They were the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, becoming the first No. top-seeded team to win the championship since Miami did it in 1999.
It was a complete team effort. The Volunteers led the nation in home runs, ranked 11th in scoring and finished sixth in ERA. They had All-Americans, Freshman All-Americans, present first-round picks, future first-rounders and some gritty, veteran college players amid the stars.
At the heart of it all was Vitello, the program’s architect and the man responsible for bringing Tennessee from the cellar of the SEC to the pinnacle of college baseball.
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Vitello did it in a truly modern way, embracing the transfer portal, the rule changes around name, image and likeness rights and the offensive surge in college baseball. But he also did it through traditional recruiting, hard work and a dedication to player development.
Vitello’s story—and Tennessee’s, because the two are intertwined—is uniquely of the moment, but also one that followed a blueprint familiar to any program-building in college baseball over the years. Vitello took over in Knoxville in 2017 and built Tennessee into a powerhouse, reaching the greatest heights this June in Omaha.
For those reasons and more, Vitello is the 2024 Baseball America College Coach of the Year. He is the second coach in program history to win the award, joining Rod Delmonico in 1995.
When Vitello arrived in Knoxville in the summer of 2017, Tennessee was in a tough spot as a program. There was history and tradition on Rocky Top, but it had been a difficult 12 years since the Volunteers had last made the NCAA Tournament. They were coming off back-to-back last-place finishes in the SEC East and had finished in the cellar of the division in six of the last 10 years.
Vitello was 38 years old and had never been a head coach before. But he had prepared for that moment for much of his life. His father Greg was a baseball and soccer coach at De Smet Jesuit High in St. Louis for 46 years, winning six state titles and earning a place in the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.
Tony Vitello knew early on he wanted to be a coach himself. He began his career at Missouri, his alma mater, where he developed a reputation as a top recruiter before moving on to TCU and Arkansas. He served as both a hitting and pitching coach while working up the ranks as an assistant for Dave Van Horn, Jim Schlossnagle and Tim Jamieson, an all-star cast of coaches from which to learn.
The cupboard wasn’t completely bare when Vitello arrived in Knoxville. Third baseman Andre Lipcius is a now big leaguer, while righthander Garrett Stallings is in Triple-A. First baseman Luc Lipcius ended his career as Tennessee’s all-time home run leader. But Vitello knew he needed to upgrade the talent level and find a niche for the program if it was going to make headway in the nation’s premier baseball conference.
Having spent a few years in the SEC already, Vitello had seen firsthand how important having a niche was for programs. At Arkansas, he recruited players knowing they’d coached by Van Horn, one of the game’s best coaches, and play in Baum-Walker Stadium, one of the sport’s crown jewels.
Other SEC schools had similar built-in appeal.
Mississippi State had Dudy Noble Field. Florida and Texas A&M had access to rich hotbeds of talent in their own states. LSU had an elite tradition and a history of winning. Mike Bianco and Tim Corbin had been in their jobs for more than a decade each and had long since figured out the winning formula at Mississippi and Vanderbilt. South Carolina had won back-to-back national titles less than a decade ago.
What could set Tennessee apart? After long internal consideration, Vitello settled on building the Volunteers around a gritty, competitive mentality. That influenced his coaching staff hires and how they started recruiting players.
“We’ve got to play with some attitude,” Vitello said. “We’ve got to play with some grit. And we’re going to have to get some guys who maybe don’t want to say ‘yes’ to a school with a better winning record than us.”
Tennessee, to be clear, was no scrappy upstart. It’s a huge state school with plenty of athletic history. But battling out of the cellar of the SEC is no easy task. It’s a zero-sum game, and if you’re going to go up, you have to climb over other teams rather than have space created for you.
“We’ve got all the resources in the world with where we’re at,” Vitello said, “but it’s a place where we kind of had to build a foundation to catch up with, again, some of these other storied programs.”
Vitello hired Frank Anderson as his pitching coach and Josh Elander as his hitting coach/recruiting coordinator. Anderson brought plenty of experience. He was Oklahoma State’s head coach for nine years and had a long, well-respected career as a pitching coach at Houston, Texas and Texas Tech. Elander was just 26 and two years removed from his playing career but had played for Vitello at TCU and was a volunteer assistant coach at Arkansas. Both Anderson and Elander have remained in those roles throughout Vitello’s tenure at Tennessee.
Quickly, Vitello and his new staff started winning on the recruiting trail. Less than a month after taking over, they landed Mississippi prep lefthander Garrett Crochet, who had previously committed to a junior college. Crochet went on to be an impact freshman in 2018 and ultimately became the program’s first first-round pitcher since R.A. Dickey in 1996. This year, Crochet is a first-time MLB All-Star.
In 2018, Tennessee went 29-27 and again finished last in the SEC East. But more high-level talent followed Crochet, and soon the Volunteers were vaulting forward. They went 40-21 in 2019 and made the NCAA Tournament, marking the first time since 2005 that Tennessee won 40 games or made regionals. That momentum rolled into 2020, with Tennessee’s record sitting at 15-2 before the pandemic canceled the season in mid-March.
The Volunteers hit a new high in 2021. They won 50 games, took the SEC East and reached the College World Series. While they went 0-2 in Omaha in their first CWS appearance since 2005, it still was one of the better seasons in program history. Tennessee hadn’t won 50 games since 1995—a College Player of the Year season for Todd Helton—and it hosted a super regional for the first time ever.
That 2021 season only set the stage for what was to come. Tennessee had the best team in the country under Vitello in 2022. His Volunteers went 57-9 that season and won the SEC going away with a 25-5 mark. The roster was loaded, led by the likes of outfielders Jordan Beck and Drew Gilbert, third baseman Trey Lipscomb and righthander Chase Dollander. About 25 months after the 2022 season ended, that Volunteers team had already produced three big leaguers—Beck, Lipscomb and reliever Ben Joyce—and it could still add about a half-dozen more, including Gilbert, Dollander and righthander Blade Tidwell, all of whom are currently Top 100 Prospects.
But for as good as that team was, Notre Dame still managed to pull off an upset in super regionals that year. By that time, Tennessee had morphed into college baseball’s villains, a reputation began in previous seasons when the Volunteers’ brash attitude drew a lot of ire.
Vitello clashed with Van Horn, his former boss, at the end of a series in 2021. Volunteer assistant coach Ross Kivett was ejected in Omaha in 2021 for arguing balls and strikes from the dugout. Tennessee took on Gilbert’s fiery persona, making for some tense moments. Their home run celebration was to drape a gaudy, cheetah-print coat around the player who hit the homer. And as Tennessee steamrolled the opposition, many took exception.
The 2022 season ended amid a firestorm. An umpire ejected Gilbert and pitching coach Frank Anderson in Game 1 of super regionals, and Tennessee went on to lose both that game and then the series when Notre Dame came back in Game 3.
That was an all-time team, and will be remembered as such in Knoxville. Elsewhere, its legacy is more complex. Vitello has often said that the emotion the Volunteers played with that year was good for college baseball because it generated national conversations about sport. It also established a certain reputation for Tennessee.
But in the years that have followed the 2022 season, that reputation has grown outdated. Vitello had built his program on attitude and emotion, and it had taken them to phenomenal heights. But the way the 2021 and 2022 seasons ended showed that some of that attitude and emotion had to be better channeled.
“We kind of had a theme going there that we needed to find a way to make this thing work,” Vitello said. “And that freight train got going, and it never really slowed down until it really got out of control, to be honest with you.”
Over the last couple years, Tennessee has continued to play with emotion. One such viral moment occurred in 2023 when righthander Chase Burns demonstrably stomped off the Southern Miss mound in celebration during super regionals. Second baseman Christian Moore was a fireball throughout his sensational postseason in 2024. The cheetah-print coat remains the team’s home run celebration.
But to call Tennessee a villain in 2024 is to be living in the past. The Volunteers celebrate their big plays, and sometimes there’s dissent from the dugout about calls on the field. But you’ll find that from just about every program in the country. Vitello has become adept at shielding his players from dustups and controversy, inviting any blame to fall on his shoulders while allowing them the latitude to play with an edge.
Across the sports spectrum, one can find many examples of players who are beloved at home but vilified by rival fans. While that applies to few coaches in today’s era, Vitello is that coach.
Fans of opposing programs see only the intense personality in the dugout. They don’t see his dedication to charity, such as when, in 2018, Vitello was suspended after an argument with an umpire and hosted a lemonade stand outside Lindsey Nelson Stadium with the proceeds benefiting the National CASA Association, which supports and promotes court-appointed volunteer advocacy so abused or neglected children can have a safe, permanent home. They don’t see the man who is known to answer calls from campus fraternities and join in their promotional efforts.
You might know Vitello as a relentless recruiter, which he is. But he is also beloved by his players and receives exceptional buy-in from them. His players are never afraid of their coach recruiting over them, welcoming the internal competition. Vitello’s energy and exuberance make for a strong combination, and the Volunteers know he’ll always go to bat for them.
After Game 3 of the CWS finals, lefthander Zander Sechrist appealed to athletic director Danny White to give Vitello a lifetime contract and explained why he feels so connected to his coach.
“The man’s like a father figure, to be honest,” Sechrist said. “I was blessed enough to have him recruit me. Growing up in a single-mother household and talking to this man mostly every day and every week, he was just like a father figure to me.”
Tennessee recruits at a high level, both among prep players and in the transfer portal. It has NIL money to fund its pursuits of some players. But Vitello has made the Volunteers excellent at the basics of coaching baseball, as well.
For all of Tennessee’s high-profile successes in recruiting, it is excellent at player development, too. Outfielder Dylan Dreiling and Moore, two of Tennessee’s CWS heroes, were not everyday players as freshmen. They had to develop into that caliber of player, which is not an uncommon story for the Volunteers. That helped Tennessee build a deep, complete roster and has made it a prime pipeline for MLB organizations.
Vitello is also unyieldingly loyal. He has kept coaches Anderson and Elander with him, as well as strength coach Quentin Eberhardt, who is a critical piece of the coaching staff. They have grown together and become one of the best coaching staffs in the country.
Vitello and Tennessee have come a long way in the last seven years. A program once mired in the cellar of the SEC East has transformed. Vitello, who arrived in Knoxville as a 38-year-old, first-time head coach, now is a national champion.
He is far from wizened now at 45, but he’s the seventh-longest tenured coach in the conference and no longer the fledgling.
Vitello has built his program and his career in tandem. There is plenty more room to grow for both, but in 2024, it was easy to see just how far he’s taken Tennessee already.
“It’s fun to make progress,” Vitello said. “And, as they say, the journey is kind of what it’s about. It’s been a fun journey, in particular, this year.”
